"Twelve nests found on top of rock paintings suggested that the paintings were younger than 12,000 years old. Meanwhile, nests beneath five other paintings suggested that those paintings were at least 13,000 to 15,000 years old."

I think maybe this is backwards.

Nests on TOP of the paintings suggest the paintings are OLDER than the nests.... since the paintings PRE-DATE the nests.

Nest BELOW the paintings suggest that the paintings are NEWER than the dated nests suggesting that the paintings were AT MOST 13k to 15k years old ... since the paintings POST DATE the nests.

"Twelve nests found on top of rock paintings suggested that the paintings were younger than 12,000 years old. Meanwhile, nests beneath five other paintings suggested that those paintings were at least 13,000 to 15,000 years old."

I think maybe this is backwards.

Nests on TOP of the paintings suggest the paintings are OLDER than the nests.... since the paintings PRE-DATE the nests.

Nest BELOW the paintings suggest that the paintings are NEWER than the dated nests suggesting that the paintings were AT MOST 13k to 15k years old ... since the paintings POST DATE the nests.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumerian was an urban culture with a written language, they were pre dated by the Ubaid which was another urban culture without writing which is about 8500 years old. There are a lot of rock art dating to around 12,000 years ago and oldest rock art is from Spain and is 64,000 years old.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumerian was an urban culture with a written language, they were pre dated by the Ubaid which was another urban culture without writing which is about 8500 years old. There are a lot of rock art dating to around 12,000 years ago and oldest rock art is from Spain and is 64,000 years old.

And of course artwork is generally not designed to last thousands of years, let a lone tens of thousands, so to find works as old as these is pretty special. There was a pebble found in a cave in Africa in a layer dated to well before homo sapiens that had a happy face by happenstance (ie not intentionally carved that way) . What was unusual about this find is that some agent (australopithicus?) picked this stone up and carried it into the cave dozens or more miles away from where the stone existed naturally. It would fit in the category of "found object art" in modern parlance. But it clearly shows the ability of earlier hominins to assign meaning to symbolic objects. Examples of human art predating these (the rock and cave art from the article) will likely continue to be found at ever increasing age but ever fewer examples.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Australian Aboriginal culture had cultivational practices for plants, animals, and even whole ecosystems, and these have been dated back for thousands of years. They also had graphic conventions for conveying complex information, as illustrated in the article above.

There's reasonable dispute from scholars about whether the kind of organisation found in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago is appropriate for describing all complex human organisation. If we define civilization based on the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, we'll only consider civilization to be things that closely resemble those regions.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Australian Aboriginal culture had cultivational practices for plants, animals, and even whole ecosystems, and these have been dated back for thousands of years. They also had graphic conventions for conveying complex information, as illustrated in the article above.

There's reasonable dispute from scholars about whether the kind of organisation found in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago is appropriate for describing all complex human organisation. If we define civilization based on the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, we'll only consider civilization to be things that closely resemble those regions.

Middle Eastern societies are important because they are the start of the modern world. Those societies are where agriculture, writing and metal tools all appeared first. The food we eat, the alphabet we write in, the architecture of buildings and the way we mark the passing of time, all have their roots in the fertile crescent. Pretending that doesn't matter is foolish.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Australian Aboriginal culture had cultivational practices for plants, animals, and even whole ecosystems, and these have been dated back for thousands of years. They also had graphic conventions for conveying complex information, as illustrated in the article above.

There's reasonable dispute from scholars about whether the kind of organisation found in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago is appropriate for describing all complex human organisation. If we define civilization based on the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, we'll only consider civilization to be things that closely resemble those regions.

Middle Eastern societies are important because they are the start of the modern world. Those societies are where agriculture, writing and metal tools all appeared first. The food we eat, the alphabet we write in, the architecture of buildings and the way we mark the passing of time, all have their roots in the fertile crescent. Pretending that doesn't matter is foolish.

You sure slew that straw man!

There was no claim that the Middle East doesn't matter. The claim was that other civilizations matter too, and some of them don't look like Middle Eastern societies.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Australian Aboriginal culture had cultivational practices for plants, animals, and even whole ecosystems, and these have been dated back for thousands of years. They also had graphic conventions for conveying complex information, as illustrated in the article above.

There's reasonable dispute from scholars about whether the kind of organisation found in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago is appropriate for describing all complex human organisation. If we define civilization based on the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, we'll only consider civilization to be things that closely resemble those regions.

Middle Eastern societies are important because they are the start of the modern world. Those societies are where agriculture, writing and metal tools all appeared first. The food we eat, the alphabet we write in, the architecture of buildings and the way we mark the passing of time, all have their roots in the fertile crescent. Pretending that doesn't matter is foolish.

You sure slew that straw man!

There was no claim that the Middle East doesn't matter. The claim was that other civilizations matter too, and some of them don't look like Middle Eastern societies.

While that is true, it needs to be clarified that native Australian populations didn't develop a civilization.

Quote:

A civilization or civilisation is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification imposed by a cultural elite, symbolic systems of communication (for example, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

Certainly complex societies, but not civilization, which is a specific form of a complex society featuring the presence of cities ("civitas" being Latin for "city.") Urbanization is one of the critical hallmarks inherent in the definition of the term. Take that away and you're not talking about civilization anymore. The issue I take with georgedarroch's post is that it seems to argue that "civilization" generally is just some kind of "sufficiently complex organization," and that there is some debate about whether pinning the definition to the urbanized forms is appropriate. That's not the case. Civilization is just one variety of complex society, but not the only kind.

Urbanization is one of the critical hallmarks inherent in the definition of the term. Take that away and you're not talking about civilization anymore.

You argument boils down to: "It's a critical hallmark of the definition because the definition names it as a critical hallmark." That's obviously a circular argument.

The questioning is whether we should perhaps expand the definition of "civilization" to form a more useful categorization of human experience. You argue we shouldn't, and we should use a different term to discuss that wider concept.

The questioning is whether we should perhaps expand the definition of "civilization" to form a more useful categorization of human experience.

You're presuming the current definition is too narrow and thus less useful. Broadening the current definition doesn't make it more useful, it would make it less useful. As is, it's specific and meaningful and covers definite, distinct forms of social organization. What do you gain by broadening it to include things that aren't under it right now?

The questioning is whether we should perhaps expand the definition of "civilization" to form a more useful categorization of human experience.

You're presuming the current definition is too narrow and thus less useful. Broadening the current definition doesn't make it more useful, it would make it less useful. As is, it's specific and meaningful and covers definite, distinct forms of social organization. What do you gain by broadening it to include things that aren't under it right now?

Neither of us is a researcher in the field that is having this conversation.

You and Albino_Boo claim affirmatively that those in the field who are arguing in favour of widening the concept this are wrong to do so.

I’m presuming that if there’s a debate in that field, there’s likely good reason for it.

It’s pretty normal in every field for debates to come up and redefine the key terms, as we discover that what we thought was important isn’t necessarily the critical feature that leads to the conclusions we made from that classification.

The questioning is whether we should perhaps expand the definition of "civilization" to form a more useful categorization of human experience.

You're presuming the current definition is too narrow and thus less useful. Broadening the current definition doesn't make it more useful, it would make it less useful. As is, it's specific and meaningful and covers definite, distinct forms of social organization. What do you gain by broadening it to include things that aren't under it right now?

Neither of us is a researcher in the field that is having this conversation.

You and Albino_Boo claim affirmatively that those in the field who are arguing in favour of widening the concept this are wrong to do so.

I’m presuming that if there’s a debate in that field, there’s likely good reason for it.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumer is generally regarded as the first modern civilization as we know it today, with extensive government, agriculture, etc. They were a cohesive society that can generally be regarded as a single group through many lenses and analysis.

It doesn't seem like the authors actually refer to the practitioners of this art style as a civilization though, simply that they all shared this common art. Lots of collections of hominids existed pre-dating Sumer, until eventually coalescing into Sumer and other civilizations.

The oldest cave paintings date tens of thousands of years older than these or Sumer, to more than 44000 years ago in France, and potentially older in some places, although that seems up for dispute.

Australian Aboriginal culture had cultivational practices for plants, animals, and even whole ecosystems, and these have been dated back for thousands of years. They also had graphic conventions for conveying complex information, as illustrated in the article above.

There's reasonable dispute from scholars about whether the kind of organisation found in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago is appropriate for describing all complex human organisation. If we define civilization based on the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, we'll only consider civilization to be things that closely resemble those regions.

Middle Eastern societies are important because they are the start of the modern world. Those societies are where agriculture, writing and metal tools all appeared first. The food we eat, the alphabet we write in, the architecture of buildings and the way we mark the passing of time, all have their roots in the fertile crescent. Pretending that doesn't matter is foolish.

You sure slew that straw man!

There was no claim that the Middle East doesn't matter. The claim was that other civilizations matter too, and some of them don't look like Middle Eastern societies.

While that is true, it needs to be clarified that native Australian populations didn't develop a civilization.

Quote:

A civilization or civilisation is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification imposed by a cultural elite, symbolic systems of communication (for example, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

Certainly complex societies, but not civilization, which is a specific form of a complex society featuring the presence of cities ("civitas" being Latin for "city.") Urbanization is one of the critical hallmarks inherent in the definition of the term. Take that away and you're not talking about civilization anymore. The issue I take with georgedarroch's post is that it seems to argue that "civilization" generally is just some kind of "sufficiently complex organization," and that there is some debate about whether pinning the definition to the urbanized forms is appropriate. That's not the case. Civilization is just one variety of complex society, but not the only kind.

You are technically correct, bestkindofcorrect.jpg, but the conflation you describe of civilisation with urbanisation is increasingly problematic because as originally intended (not by you) it carries a wagonload of history and value judgements such as defining non-urbanised societies as uncivilised and therefore barbaric which is kissing cousins with inferior and other unsavoury lines of thought and philosophies.

We saw some of these paintings and the wasps' nest back in 1997 while staying at El Questro in the Kimberley. We were told that a some of the nests on top of the art work had been dated to about 9000 BP meaning that the paintings had to be older than that. They were painted high on the cliff wall under an overhang along the Chamberlain River. Our guides took us there in little electrically powered boats. They brought car batteries to power them. Since there had been a radiocarbon dating, researchers were aware of these paintings among others in the region. It's good to see more recent studies.

You are technically correct, bestkindofcorrect.jpg, but the conflation you describe of civilisation with urbanisation is increasingly problematic because as originally intended (not by you) it carries a wagonload of history and value judgements such as defining non-urbanised societies as uncivilised and therefore barbaric which is kissing cousins with inferior and other unsavoury lines of thought and philosophies.

Similar baggage was loaded onto "evolution" forever but we don't abandon good, useful concepts just because humans gonna human.

I was watching a cooking show on Netflix and in it there was a part about Australia. They visited and area where the aboriginal people of Australia had been meeting for 50,000 years. It was a rock formation in the shape of a giant table. Underneath it was the meeting place.

I find it interesting unlike other old place like 12,000 years-old Göbekli Tepe or Jericho also about 12,000 years-old that the Australia site still has the same culture.

Amazing article and beautiful paintings. I’ve never heard of this collection of art and had no idea even the middle period stuff is over 12,000 years old.

That predates even the Sumer civilisation (which I first read about in Snow Crash) which I thought was the oldest at around 6,500 years old. This is twice that age.

Sumerian was an urban culture with a written language, they were pre dated by the Ubaid which was another urban culture without writing which is about 8500 years old. There are a lot of rock art dating to around 12,000 years ago and oldest rock art is from Spain and is 64,000 years old.

There is also cave art on Sulawesi uranium isotope dated to the same era, according to the most recent edition of Scientific American.